Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

My street cabinet is 450 yards away and the exchange is about 150 yards from there.According to BT I should get ADSL 2+ download speeds of up to 18.5Mb but I have never got much more than 11. BT also estimates fibre speed at 69Mb-80Mb.Given that copper (or aluminium) cable represents 75% of the distance to the exchange and fibre only 25% I am realistically going to see much benefit from FTTC?

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

Without a doubt yes.Unlimited fibre is just brilliant.. in my case at least. If you have a house full of people who want to stream netflix whilst there's someone who is screaming at you because their game has disconnected etc. YES. It is worth it. There's no lag, ever.. You can literally have 3 people watching netflix one person playing an FPS game at 15ms ping and some downloads in the backround without any lag for anyone.So yeah.Enough said I suppose Edit: As for speeds I went from like 5MB / sec on ADSL to 40MB / sec on fibre and I'm quite far away from exchange.Edit2: It's really fast to install as well. A BT guy just comes out with an extra router (or they deliver beforehand I forget).. Then he just takes off the socket for your phone and replaces it with a new one, drives away to do something at the cabinet for 10 - 20 minutes, drives back, says you're okay and that's it.. You're on fibre

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

The line from the exchange to the cab is fibre optic which has essentially no reduction in speedThe critical thing is the distance from you to the cab which uses the same wires as ADSLNow if a large part of that is aluminium you are most unlikely to see the forecast speed as I believe the calculation only takes into account distance not the fact that the wire is rubbishThe fact that you are seeing rotten speeds at present is a sign that you should be worried,Can you post the present stats from your router - noise margin, speeds and attenuation

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

We use the individual line characteristics to match a line to similar lines in our network that already have GEA-FTTC installed. With this information, we display the range of speeds that the actual end users with similar lines are getting. Because we don’t know the actual line details until a line is installed, the top speed we display is the speed that 20% of end users are getting on similar lines and the bottom speed we display is the speed that 80% of end users are getting. We call these the 80th and 20th percentile speeds.There are a number of factors that can impact an end user’s actual sync speed. These factors are naturally represented within the range of speeds we display since they are represented in the live network:- Line length (the distance of the copper wire from the cabinet where the broadband equipment is, to the end user’s premises); - Line quality (eg: age of the copper and whether any part of the line is actually aluminium, rather than copper, etc.);- The number of other GEA data services provided on the local cabinet (known as cable-fill).When we initially estimate a new line before the GEA service is installed on it, we use the actual line length from the cabinet to the local distribution point (eg: the telephone pole that feeds the houses on the street) and an average line length value for the “final drop” because we know that this is usually up to 50 meters.In a very few cases, the final drop can be much longer; even up to a kilometre, and is usually the reason why an end user’s actual speed might fall outside the range of speeds that we provide at the point of sale. But this situation doesn’t happen often and end users are usually still happy with the service because it’s typically still faster than ADSL where the length from the home all the way back to the local exchange affects the speed.The amount of traffic that is running in the same copper cables from the cabinet to the local distribution point, before the “final drop” to the end user’s home can sometimes create noise, called cross talk, which can also reduce the speed that an end user can get.

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

According to BT I should get ADSL 2+ download speeds of up to 18.5Mb but I have never got much more than 11.

What do your line stats look like? @600m you should get full speed (or very close). Possibly the line takes a much longer route, possibly there's a line fault. It would be good to see attenuation, snr margin and any other relevant info on your existing ADSL.Do notice any limitations with your existing service?

Call me 'w23'At any given moment in the universe many things happen. Coincidence is a matter of how close these events are in space, time and relationship.Opinions expressed in forum posts are those of the poster, others may have different views.

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

The line from the exchange to the cab is fibre optic which has essentially no reduction in speedThe critical thing is the distance from you to the cab which uses the same wires as ADSLNow if a large part of that is aluminium you are most unlikely to see the forecast speed as I believe the calculation only takes into account distance not the fact that the wire is rubbishThe fact that you are seeing rotten speeds at present is a sign that you should be worried,Can you post the present stats from your router - noise margin, speeds and attenuation

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

According to http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/max_speed_calc.php that equates to a line length of 2.1km and you should see speeds of about 16Mbps with a noise margin of 6dBAlso using the usual rule of thumb - downstream attenuation should be about twice the upstream value and yours is reported as being a lot lower so something is seriously adrift either with your line or with the router reportingHopefully a member of staff can assist here by checking the attenuation figures they seeThis is indeed worrying for fibre if the dodgy wires are between you and the cab assuming that the line length you quoted is accurateWhile we are waiting for it to be picked upHave you got a master socket with a removable lower faceplate. If so can you plug the router into the test socket behind via a filter and report the stats again

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

Hello JimThanks for your responses.I used http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.TelephoneNumberOutput to check the cabinet number and http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/ to check the location. It is several streets away from me. I am puzzled by this as there are two cabinets along the way, one of which is just round the corner from my house.The BT exchange is visible across a main road from my cabinet.My BT socket has a filtered faceplate splitter. After I fitted that a few years ago connection speeds went up from 8-9 to 11.As you say, attenuation seems to be the problem.[Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): Full quote of preceding post removed, as per Forum Rule]

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

With respect to the cabinetBetween me and the cabinet is an auxiliary cabThe line goes from the main cab ( number 20) to an auxiliary cab (number 20/1) and then to my house but the checker doesn't mention the auxiliary cab That reported increase in speed would seem to indicate a problem with your internal wiring which the filtered faceplate may have ameliorated so a check on the test socket is definitely worth doingNote that when using the test socket all other telephone points should be dead

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

Hi Tony,I've checked your line stats and I have got exactly the same as you.On a 29db loop loss though, I'd expect better than what you get. I'd be interested in the stats whilst you are plugged into the test socket. Let us know when / if you are in the test socket. I don't think there will be much of a difference, but I want to check it anyway. Tony

Re: Is It Worth Getting Fibre?

Hi Tony,I've checked your line stats and I have got exactly the same as you.On a 29db loop loss though, I'd expect better than what you get. I'd be interested in the stats whilst you are plugged into the test socket. Let us know when / if you are in the test socket. I don't think there will be much of a difference, but I want to check it anyway. Tony